San Juan del Sur

So we flew out of Puerto Cabezas into Managua last Friday and found ourselves in the civilized world once more! Everything amazed us - the cars whizzing by outside the airport, the fast food available in the airport, billboards, shopping malls, movie theaters . . . after living in the jungle for five months, we have forgotten that such things exist. When we first came to Nicaragua, Managua seemed small and run-down to us. Now, all it takes is a real mattress in our hotel room to make us feel like aristocrats. (By real, I mean about 6 in. tall with springs inside, as opposed to the cloth-covered sheets of foam we sleep on in Francia.)

In Managua we stayed in Covanic, the Adventist school that we stayed at when we first arrived five months ago. On Sunday we took a day trip to Masaya, a city a short distance south of Managua (or perhaps a sort of suburb). In the morning we visited the Masaya volcano. We drove up to a parking lot near the top. From there we could see down into the crater. The smoke rising from its depths obscured the lava I assume lay in the bottom. We walked up some stairs to a viewing station where we could see more of the area around the crater. A few hawks were wheeling around the volcano´s mouth, soaring through the smoke. Swallows swept by me, too. I wondered how they could live in the sulfur fumes.

We hiked up a hill on the other side of the volcano to get a bird´s eye view of the whole area, including a beautiful lake. Then we left for the famous Masaya market, where you can buy everything a tourist could ever want, including frog-skin purses with the frog´s head still on and highly indecent coffee mugs portraying the feminine figure. We much prefered the mugs with the ceramic cochroach in the bottom - they reminded us of what it´s like to live at home in Francia Sirpi.

Today (Monday) we headed to Costa Rica to get our visas renewed. It was a boring day - we spent most of it standing in lines. We only stayed in Costa Rica long enough to eat lunch. :) Nicaragua requires foreigners who hold tourist visas to leave the country every six months. After three days, you are free to re-enter and apply for a new visa. We didn´t want to spend three days in Costa Rica, so we just spent about an hour and came back. Nobody seemed to mind, so we assume the three day rule isn´t that important.

On the way back towards Managua from the Costan Rican border, we turned off on the San Juan del Sur road. We found an inexpensive but nice (real mattresses!) hotel with a breath-taking view of the ocean, then headed out to the beach just in time for sunset. I´ll post pìctures when possible. Just a short description for now - the beach is on a little bay and there are craggy hills on the edges for the sun to set behind. The clouds made the sky a fiery pink-red color. The waves crested on the shore in perfect little rolls. And the sand was fine and soft - extremely nice to dive onto. Also nice to wrestle your friend down onto, which we did repeatedly.

After months of work and stress, this was the perfect evening. Having worship with my friends that I love as a second family, sitting on the beach in an almost perfect world . . . how much more can I ask in life?

Tomorrow I may learn how to surf! The beaches of San Juan del Sur are famous surfing locations, and we can rent boards and get lessons. We´ll see how it goes. ;)